Everyone thinks they know what a revivor is, but the truth is the only ones who really know are the revivors themselves. The first time I ever saw one was during my initial tour in the grinder, where even at night it was like a furnace, and when a hot breeze blew through the brush, I could smell them. When that first one moved into the moonlight where I could see it, I was scared. I had never been as scared about anything else before. People argue about what goes on in their heads, but I couldn’t tell what it was thinking, or whether it was thinking at all. All I can really say is that no one who has seen a revivor face-to-face would ever choose to become one. That was why I was in the elevator of that building the night that it all started.
Heading up to the eighty-second floor, I watched the numbers flip and tried to calm my heart. Assistant Director Noakes had put me on the case because of my prior experience with revivors, but I would have volunteered. Those things belong in the ground, but short of that, they belong on the other side of the world, not on mine.
The car ground to a stop and the doors opened into a barely lit corridor. I stepped out into the shadows and moved toward the door at the far end. Everything I saw was recorded and then transmitted to the men below through the implant wired near the base of my skull. They monitored the visual feed and even my vital signs as they waited for my signal. I opened the secure communications circuit and sent them confirmation.
I’m inside.
Roger that.
The words floated in front of me, then faded as I moved down the hall. Like a lot of properties in the area, most of the offices were empty; there were a few businesses scraping by, but past the sixtieth floor the place was vacant, except for one. The office I was visiting supposedly bought and sold small-scale third-party processing components, which was a nice touch. I had no doubt that front even made a little extra money on the side.
I made my way past the locked rooms and dark offices until I came to the one I was looking for. The door was closed and unmarked, with a black buzzer next to it. I pushed the button and waited.
They’d be watching me; I couldn’t see it, but somewhere a camera was checking me out to make sure I was someone they were expecting. A few seconds later there was a heavy snap from inside the door. I opened it and went inside.
It was the first time I’d actually seen the place, and it was pretty much what I expected. The lobby was stripped bare, with nothing on the walls and no place to sit. What would have been the reception area was set up with a terminal and was being used as a workspace with wires trailing across the dusty floor. Tai and two of his men were waiting there for me.
“Right on time,” Tai said. “I’m glad you decided to show.”
Tai was a dark-skinned Asian with long hair and a long face. The two guys with him were tattooed, tough-looking types I didn’t recognize.
“Check him out.”
I raised my hands to shoulder height as the two men approached me. One of them swept an electronic wand up and down the front and back of me while the other took a more hands-on approach and patted me down. The one with the wand nodded at Tai, and he dismissed them.
“You ready?” Tai asked.
“Yeah.”
“They’re back there,” he said, gesturing to a door behind him. “You were looking for ten?”
“Ten if I can use them,” I said. “More if they work out.”
Tai nodded.
“You can see them for yourself and decide,” he said. “I’ve got one set up if you want to sample it. Last door on the left.”
“Thanks.”
“No rough stuff.”
“How long do I have?” I asked.
“I’ll give you five minutes to do whatever you’re going to do,” he said. “After that I’ll show you the others, and we can talk about price.”
“Assuming they’re acceptable.”
“They will be.”
I headed through the door and it closed behind me. The hallway beyond was quiet except for the hum of multiple terminals and a heating unit, with stacks of cardboard and some wooden pallets leaning against the walls. Just above the white noise, I could make out the sound of movement.
I blinked, activating the heads-up display that shone back onto my retinas. The connection with the men waiting downstairs was open, and everything was being recorded. Using a backscatter filter, I could see tiny hidden cameras standing out in sharp relief just behind the drywall, watching me as I made my way down. Cooling thermal signatures across the floor indicated people had been back there recently. I followed them to the last door on the left.
I could feel my heart pounding as I pushed open the door and the smell of urine drifted out. The door opened into a restroom, where the stall doors hung open and most of the toilets were covered with plastic wrap. The floor had traces of half-wiped-away blood, and there was some spattered across the wall where the sinks were. Someone had met with bad news there, but my attention was drawn to the middle of the room. There, standing barefoot on the filthy tiles with its knees together and its hands clutched by its sides, was the revivor.
The old fear took me a little by surprise. Despite the fact that it was a female and practically a girl, I had to force myself to move closer to it.
It stood maybe five foot six, a head or so shorter than me, with thin arms and legs and long, straight black hair that partly covered its face. From behind the strands two large eyes looked out at me, the irises a pale silver color, just barely illuminated with a glow that reminded me of moonlight. They followed me as I approached.
It was an improvement over the ones I’d encountered during my tour. The skin was well preserved, and its porcelain tone made the revivor look like a doll or wax figure. The synthetic blood they were using now made some of the veins stand out darkly, but some clientele actually liked that. The cosmetic surgeries had been well-done, too, with almost no scarring. The large, augmented breasts looked out of place on such a thin body, but otherwise might almost have been the originals. The small nipples pointed forward like bullets.
“Stand over there,” I told it, pointing to one of the sinks that were covered in plastic.
It did, so it understood English. Its expression didn’t change as its bare feet padded across the dirty floor and it stood in front of the sink, its back to the mirror.
“Turn around.”
It did, gripping the sides of the sink through the plastic wrapping and bending over slightly in a movement that looked practiced. I focused on the back of its neck, just beneath the skull.
“Hold still.”
I brought up the scanner and looked under the skin and muscle where the components were clustered, a network of nodes and hair-thin filaments around the spot where the spinal cord met the brain. An amber squiggle of light jumped across a circular screen, hovering to one side of the display before snapping into a single waveform—the revivor’s heart signature. I processed the signal and pulled the identification. The lot number wasn’t on file, so it wasn’t sold legitimately. Someone had had this one made to order.
In the mirror, I could see its eyes staring downward as it waited to be violated. My investigations had suggested that Tai had the pleasure models smuggled from Korea, but whoever the woman had been, she didn’t look like a Korean local. A tourist, maybe? Someone who wandered down the wrong street?
I focused on the revivor’s face in the mirror as it stared through its dark hair, so that the men below could see it.
You getting this? I asked.
Confirmed.
I had three of Tai’s five minutes left, assuming he stuck to his word.
“You can turn around now,” I told it.
It turned, standing with its back toward the sink and staring up at me blankly.
“Someone’s probably still looking for you,” I said. I said it to myself, but it answered.
“He is.”
I had intended to use a small, directed electromagnetic pulse to short out the components and put it down before leaving the room, but I didn’t. It continued to stare into my eyes, expressionless.
Wachalowski, deactivate it.
I was well aware that everyone involved was watching this unfold in real time. Later, I would be questioned about why I did what I did. I had been picked for the operation on the assumption that I knew what a revivor was and wouldn’t be prone to hesitation. If anything went wrong, I would be held accountable.
“What did you say?” I asked. Its eyes didn’t betray any sadness, or any feeling at all as it answered.
“He’ll never stop looking.”
An uneasy feeling sank into my gut.
Wachalowski, deactivate it.
I hated revivors. I hated everything about them. They were the worst symptom of a sick arms race that had gotten out of control a long time ago. I’d shipped off for my tour thinking I understood what they were. The day I learned I was wrong came close to being my last day on earth.
The girl looked up at me. When the time came to put it down, I thought I would enjoy it.
Instead I said, “Stay here. Don’t move, and don’t say anything. Do you understand?”
It nodded.
“If things go bad, hide behind whatever you can, and keep your head down.”
I left the bathroom and moved down the corridor. A door to the left was locked, but the next one on the right opened, and I looked in to see a group of figures sitting at desks arranged in rows. Each desk had a small light that lit its surface in the otherwise dark room. Many pairs of silvery eyes floated in the darkness, turning toward me as the door opened. It looked like they were assembling some kind of electronics.
Can you make them out? I asked.
Yes.
One of them spoke in an Asian dialect, turning its attention from the desk. The translator scrolled its words across the bottom of my peripheral vision.
Who are you? What are you doing in here?
Something else had caught my attention, though. In the back, behind the sweatshop laborers, a series of crates were stacked. An automatic rifle was leaning against one of them, and I switched filters to scan inside the crates to see what else was in there.
Stop there. The words flashed at the bottom of my vision. I did.
Tai trafficked in black-market revivors; that I knew. Some minor gunrunning or drug dealing wouldn’t have surprised me either, since he already had the smuggling routes in place, but he dealt in revivors for the labor and sex trade. My investigation of him didn’t prepare me to see anything like what I saw.
The crates contained mostly guns, but not the street variety. These were weapons designed to penetrate not just body armor, but tank armor. The varieties of assault rifle I could see included sophisticated targeting systems, multispectrum scopes, and heat-seeking ammo; it was all top-shelf stuff. These were weapons of war.
What are you doing in here? The revivor asked again.
I backed out and closed the door.
Move now, I told SWAT.
On our way.
“Hey,” I heard Tai say in a low voice from down the hall. I turned and saw he had entered from the lobby. He wasn’t smiling.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I said the last door on your left,” he said. “That’s your right, and it’s not the last door.”
“I know. I just—”
“Never mind,” he said. “Those aren’t the ones you want. The ones you want are down here.” He gestured down the hallway as he joined me, placing his left hand on my shoulder.
His fist hit my ribs like a stone, and the breath went out of me. I staggered and hit the wall, gasping. The door to the sweatshop opened a little and a female revivor’s head peeked out.
“Get back in there,” Tai said without looking at it. The head retreated and the door closed.
“Hold still,” he said, fishing around in his inside jacket pocket.
“Tai, take it easy….”
At the last minute, I saw the knife in his other hand. He shoved me back, smashing me into the wall with a forearm across my neck. I felt a hard blow to my groin as the knife’s blade dug into the wall between my legs.
“Hold still,” he said. He took his forearm off my neck and I saw it was a penlight he had taken out of his coat. He flicked it on and shined it in my left eye. I turned my head, but the hand with the knife exerted a little pressure.
“Look forward, and don’t move.”
If he got a clear look with the light, he’d see the iridescent reflection that would confirm I was implanted. The blade was an inch from my testicles, and the artery in either thigh.
“Tai, you’re making a mistake,” I said. “I just got turned around for—”
“Don’t take this personally.”
I blinked once, hard, shutting down the implant; it was the only thing that was going to buy me any more time. With the visual filters off-line, he wouldn’t notice anything strange. I opened my eyes wide, and looked straight ahead before Tai could say anything else. He shined the light in my eye and leaned in close. He stared into it for a while, his breath on my face. After a few seconds, he snapped off the light.
I didn’t say anything; I just kept holding my breath. The knife came out of the wall and moved out from between my legs.
He lunged, but I knew it was coming. I tried to move, but he kicked out my right leg and pushed me down against the wall. I fell into an awkward squat but managed to deflect his thrust, and the knife slammed into the wall just to the left of my throat.
I grabbed his leg and rammed my forearm into his pelvis, knocking him back. He lost his balance and crashed back into the door behind him, the two of us spilling into the room where the revivors were working. It looked like he had lost the knife, but his hand was in his jacket. I grabbed his wrist and we struggled. I saw the gun coming out, and some of the revivors tried to pull me off of him.
I squeezed my eyes shut and reactivated the implant.
Jovanovic-Zaytsev Industries Cybernetic Implant model L65730001-M initializing …
The JZI came back online. Tai struggled to get the gun free as diagnostic information scrolled in front of me and the communications link began to reconnect. The translator module finished initializing, and as the revivors continued to chatter, words began streaming by.
Stop! What are you doing? Help!
I kept my weight on Tai, but he was stronger than he looked. I brought my fist back, my elbow crunching into the nose of one of the revivors who was trying to pull me away, then hit Tai with everything I had. His eyes swam, but he didn’t go out. The revivor I’d creamed fell onto the floor next to us, clutching its face.
Before I could hit him again, a big hand grabbed my arm from behind, hauling me back like a rag doll. As I was pulled off of Tai, I kept a grip on his gun, and as my feet left the ground, I stomped my heel on his forehead.
That put him down. His hand went slack, and I grabbed the gun as a beefy arm came around the front of my neck and squeezed. The muscle felt like cold stone against my throat, and breath smelling of rot huffed down the back of my neck.
The fear was worse than I had remembered. My legs went weak and everything seemed to slow down. I put the barrel of the gun against the thigh of the thing behind me and pulled the trigger. The blood that splashed back was cold.
Tai’s eyes fluttered open and he sat up, looking disoriented. He got to his feet and smoothed his clothes.
“Kill him,” he said.
He took off, but I didn’t see where he went. The arm came off my neck and I pulled in a breath as I was spun around, spots swimming in front of me. Something crashed across my head, and my legs went out from under me. As I dangled by one wrist, the hand that gripped it tried to shake the gun out of my hand. I looked up and saw a big male revivor with cropped black hair standing over me, its eyes ghostly white. Its mouth gaped open and long strands of drool hung from its lower lip, all of its crowded teeth on display.
This was the kind of revivor I knew. Low-end, made for combat, with only one or two imperatives buzzing around in its decaying brain. It might have come from the same steamy hellhole where I saw my first one.
I hit it, but if the thing felt any pain at all it didn’t show it. It forced my gun hand around and I squeezed off another shot, which grazed its ear. It pushed the gun back, twisting it around toward me.
As the barrel began to move toward my face, I felt the thing’s thumb rooting around for the trigger. From over the revivor’s shoulder I saw the bathroom door open, and the female revivor stepped out, staring at me through its stringy hair. It held its hands up in front of it, like a child who wasn’t sure what to do.
There was a loud bang, and the female retreated back into the bathroom. Shadows played on the wall as two uniformed SWAT men barreled around the corner.
“Here!” the one taking point shouted. Without hesitation, he aimed and fired, causing the revivor’s head to pitch to one side, spraying oily black fluid. The grip on my wrist released as it staggered away from me.
The SWAT officer fired again, and it dropped to one knee, then fell onto its back. The two men approached me as I rubbed my wrist. I moved over to where the revivor lay, trying to get back up as fluid pooled around its head. I aimed the gun and fired, putting a bullet between its eyes. I fired three more rounds and the top of its head broke open, spilling black guts out onto the floor.
“Whoa, whoa!” the officer said, holding up one hand. “You got him, chief.”
“That is not a pleasure or a labor model,” I said, pointing at it with the barrel of the gun.
Something was going on here. Tai was into something that went way beyond what I’d gone there to bust him for; something he’d managed to keep secret.
I turned and saw Tai being dragged into view down at the end of the hall. Two more officers forced him against the wall, and when he tried to turn around, one of them kicked out his leg and forced him onto his knees.
“Hands behind your head.”
“Starting a war?” I asked him.
He grinned. “Keep your doors locked,” he said in a low voice, glaring at me. He didn’t look angry, just serious.
“Shut up,” the SWAT guy said. I turned and started down the hallway.
“You hear me?” Tai called.
“Yeah.”
I passed the wall where Tai had pinned me, and saw his knife lying a few feet away. I approached the squad leader.
“There are ten revivors out back,” I said to him, “plus one in the bathroom.”
“Looks like our guys picked up another ten,” he said, “plus the rest of Tai’s men. You all right?”
“Yeah. Process Tai and the others, then load them and the revivors into the truck.”
“Roger.”
“Were your techs able to get a connection into his computer system?”
“You should have access now.”
I scanned and found the socket, then opened a connection to it and brought up the system in my field of view. I turned the antisecurity software on it and waited for it to drill down and disable his firewall. Tai’s stuff was encrypted, but nothing fancy. I cycled through his files, which mostly consisted of inventory—the specs and identifications of revivors he had brought into the country, which ones had been moved already, and which ones were still on order. No pickup location was spelled out, but there was a series of docket numbers, and it didn’t take long to match them to receiving ports at the Palm Harbor Shipyard. It looked as if they were being smuggled in among legitimate cargo from a bunch of different sources. I couldn’t tell from where, but it was a good start.
I headed back to the reception area, where the SWAT team had gathered the revivors. They had been grouped in rows and were now kneeling, with their hands behind their heads. Most of them were female and had cookie-cutter versions of the same body modifications. They were all dressed in cheap paper hospital smocks.
As I headed out the door, I turned back and saw one of the men bring in the one from the bathroom, nudging it forward with the barrel of his rifle. It looked at me like it recognized me. The man forced it down onto the floor with the others, and I turned and headed back to the elevator, putting in a call to the assistant director.
Noakes.
This is Noakes.
Agent Wachalowski reporting. Four suspects apprehended. Twenty-one revivors recovered. It looks like they’ve been bringing them in via Palm Harbor.
Where are the revivors now?
SWAT is loading them into the truck. We uncovered some pretty serious firepower here as well. Weapons, ammunition, and other military equipment. SWAT is cataloging it; you’ll have the list shortly.
What are we looking at?
Whoever wanted it knows his stuff. There’s enough to arm a small militia.
Noakes didn’t respond right away.
Get the seller down here. We need that information.
They’re moving him and the revivors now. From Tai’s records, it looks like something was just brought in to the shipyard. I’m on my way there. If we’re lucky, no one has picked it up yet.
A team will meet you there. Find out where that stuff was going.
I will.
The doors opened, and I crossed into the lobby. Across the foyer, I could see someone standing in the shadows near the exit. He wasn’t in uniform. I pinged the squad leader upstairs.
You guys have anyone in the lobby?
Negative. Two outside; the rest are up here.
The figure moved toward me, and when he stepped into the light I could see he was young, maybe college age. He had tangled brown hair and uneven stubble. He wore sneakers, running pants, and a gray hoodie. He wasn’t carrying a weapon.
“What are you doing in here?” I asked him.
“Agent Wachalowski?”
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
I scanned into the soft tissue of his face and saw some bioelectronics fitted behind the eyes. He was here gathering footage. I was being recorded.
“I hear you’ve got some revivors upstairs,” he said.
“Be careful what you admit to,” I said, moving past him. “There’s only one way you could have heard that.”
As I pushed past, he followed, keeping pace with me.
“Come on, you can give me something, can’t you?”
“Sorry, I can’t,” I said. “And listening in on even unsecured communications like that is a felony; you know that. The SWAT guys are on their way down, and if they find you here, you’re going to be arrested.”
There’s a reporter down here looking for footage. Clear him out before you bring the revivors down.
Roger that.
“It’s already out,” he said. “You can’t keep it a secret. Just give me fifteen seconds’ worth.”
“Technically, if you’re not outside, you’re supposed to inform anyone you talk to if you’re going to record them,” I said. “Like you’re doing right now. If you want, I can slap an injunction on you, and the techs can take a crawl through everything you’ve got sitting in your buffers. How does that sound?”
That seemed to hit home, and he stayed behind as I headed across the parking lot toward my car. When I got in, I could see him still standing there like he wasn’t sure whether or not he should chance going back. In the rearview mirror I saw him watching me, probably still recording as I pulled out and drove away.
With the scene behind me, I took a deep breath. I realized my heart was pounding and I tried to slow it down. I couldn’t get the image of that girl revivor’s face out of my head.
The first time I ever saw a revivor’s face, it was dark out and hotter than hell. The revivor was a male, and when it came staggering up out of the wet grass, I knew for a fact that the man was dead because I was the one who had killed him.
The last time I’d seen one out in the grinder, I was being airlifted away in a helicopter, with a tube down my throat. It came lurching out of the brush, wet eyes staring right at me as we began to rise. Its teeth, stained bright red, were showing, and there was a terrible want on that waxy face that remained even as the gunner turned on it and made it dance.
“Faye,” he’d whispered. I could almost still hear him as I roused from the dream, stirring in my cold bed.
“You’re a beautiful woman, Faye….” He’d breathed it into my ear, the stubble from his chin pricking the side of my neck. He had finally stopped, and was propped over me, smelling like sweat and that brand of deodorant he used. Even awake, I could almost still smell him. It was almost real.
“You deserve better than this,” he’d said, as he said every time. “The world should be yours.”
Stretching under the covers, I tried to shake it off. I didn’t want the world; all I wanted was to make it to first tier without getting shipped off to the grinder. I didn’t want the things I dreamed, no matter how many times I dreamed them. Sometimes I thought they happened because he was the only man I knew, but I knew him only because I worked next to him every day. We never had so much as a drink together, and he had never even been inside my apartment the entire time I’d known him.
Besides, I didn’t think of Doyle like that. It wasn’t even a departmental or career thing; I just didn’t think of him that way, and that made the whole thing all the more strange. Doyle Shanks was a friend and I liked him, but there was nothing else there. Not even the dreams could change that.
My phone was ringing. I cracked my eyes open and saw that neon was still seeping through the blinds, but otherwise the room was dark. It wasn’t morning yet, then. I wasn’t sure how long I had been asleep, but it hadn’t been nearly long enough.
The room seemed to spin slightly as I oriented myself, finding the dresser where the indicator light on my cell made a mellow green strobe as it rang again. Cold air rushed under the blankets as I groped for it and brought it close to my face to check the number; it wasn’t Shanks’s cell, but I couldn’t think of anyone else who’d be calling me.
They found another body. That was the first thought that came into my head. That would make a fourth. Four murders, all the same. I knew somehow that the case was going to go from bad to worse. I retreated back under the covers and flipped open the phone.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Dasalia?” a man asked. It wasn’t Shanks; I didn’t recognize the voice.
“Who is this?”
“Is this Detective Dasalia?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Detective, someone is walking in your shadow.”
Terrific. A precious handful of hours of sleep, cut short for this.
“Look—”
“Stop following me, Detective.”
That got my attention. I sat up in bed, pulling the covers around me. Fumbling with the phone, I began recording the call and started a trace. Had he actually decided to make contact after being virtually invisible for so long? Could I be that lucky?
“Who is this?” I asked.
“Did you hear me? I said stop following me.”
“Am I following you?”
“Yes. You will find another one this morning. Your partner will find her first, but I want you to let it go.”
“You want me to let you continue killing these people and do nothing?”
“Yes.”
Glancing at the screen, I could see the trace was coming up empty. The ’bot was having trouble following the circuit connections back to the source, for some reason.
“Why should I do that?” I asked. “Why are you doing this? Help me understand it. Is it because they’re all first tier?”
So far, that was the only thing any of the victims had in common; they all managed to make it to first tier without getting shipped off to serve. It was a category I hoped to fall into myself one day, but none of the victims so far looked like they had to work very hard for it.
“Your only way out of this is to wake up,” he said, ignoring me.
The trace had failed. Whoever he was, he could be anywhere. He was quiet for a minute. I listened but I couldn’t hear anything on his end. There was nothing to indicate where he might be. The line was eerily quiet, almost like a digital recording.
“What do you mean—”
“Try to wake up,” he said, and the line cut out.
I stared at the LCD for a minute, trying to make sense of it as the screen flashed and the connection dropped.
The time said 3:13 a.m. I’d been in bed for a little more than four hours, and I had one more hour of sleep coming that I wasn’t going to get. The cold was already invading my bed. It was time to get moving.
Stretching again, I felt aches in my lower back and other places that were harder to explain. One night I had watched people on TV debate the possibility that a dream could be so vivid, it could affect a person’s physical body. At least one of them believed it was possible that dying in a dream that was vivid enough could result in a person’s death. It made me wonder whether the same premise held true for an erotic dream, and if one were vivid enough, would it be the same as actually committing the acts? If it was, it was grossly unfair.
I got up, hating the way my joints cracked as I stood and stretched. Since the tenant below had moved out, the floor was always freezing and I had gooseflesh head to toe in seconds. I snapped on the carnival glass lamp next to the bed, found my slippers, and shrugged on my robe, pulling it tightly around me. The floor squeaked under my feet as I made my way in a haze into the kitchen.
I’d spent the previous night comparing everything I knew about the victims, trying to find some kind of thread that tied them together, but so far I had come up pretty much empty. The murders had a ritualistic quality that made me think the selection of the victims should be significant, but none of them appeared to have anything in common at all, except their first- tier status, which wasn’t much to go on.
I poured a small glass of water from the filter and set it in the microwave, then took a single sugar cube from the little jar on the table. Using a dropper from the bottle next to it, I squeezed two amber drops onto the cube and watched the liquid bleed through the white granules. I was still staring at it when my phone rang again.
“Hello?”
“Dasalia, it’s me.”
“Shanks,” I said. The microwave dinged, and I winced as I reached in and pulled out the steaming glass.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“They found another one,” he said.
Your partner will find her first….
“Female?” I asked.
“Yeah. How’d you know that?”
I plopped down at the kitchen table, put the sugar cube on my tongue, and tipped back the glass. The cube dissolved as the hot water scalded my mouth, and I swallowed the bittersweet liquid in one hard gulp.
“We’re being watched,” I told him, blowing out a hot sigh. “I just got a call announcing the new victim.”
“The killer?”
“He implied he was. Have the officers look around; the call came literally less than five minutes ago. He could be watching you now.”
“On it.”
“Who’s the lucky girl?”
“Her name was Mae Zhu,” he said. “She was found in her car when they went to tow it. Same wound. Same chemical signature.”
Those were the only two constants in each of the murders, and the only two links we had to the killer. One was the unique shape of the wound pattern, and the other was a faint chemical trace that indicated he either worked with explosives or carried them somewhere on him.
“Send me the address.”
My phone beeped and I checked the incoming message; this murder had happened right in the middle of the shopping district.
“Any witnesses?” I asked.
“No one saw a thing.”
“I’ll see if any security cameras picked anything up,” I said. “I’m leaving now; I’ll meet you over there.”
“Okay,” he said. “Sorry to wake you.”
“I was up.”
“Your eval is today. Don’t forget.”
I sighed. I’d forgotten about the psych evaluation. I didn’t have time for that. There wasn’t enough time as it was.
“I’ll meet you over there,” I said.
I hung up and leaned back in the chair, feeling the warm, tingly feeling spread down my arms and legs as the stimulant kicked in. It was a sorry substitute for sleep, but it was better than nothing.
Try to wake up.
Pressing my palms over my eyelids, I felt my eyes aching behind them. That wasn’t my problem; I spent my whole life awake, it seemed. If it wasn’t for the sedatives, I’d never sleep at all.
My foot had started tapping as a surplus of energy surged through me, cutting through the fog and bringing me back to life. I had to get moving.
I’d showered the night before, so that was going to have to do. I brushed my teeth, bundled up, and grabbed my maglev chit off the countertop. When I made my way outside, it was still dark and bitterly cold. Sometime during the four hours or so I’d been in bed, it had snowed, leaving a thin white blanket over everything.
I pulled my coat tighter around me and started making the arrangements to have the security footage piped over. I headed down the sidewalk to the subway station, hoping victim number five would tell me something the other four hadn’t.
“Calliope …Flax …is …down!”
A judge was screaming through the amp, but fuck if I could hear anything else with my ear in the canvas and the rest of my face full of sweat, muscle, and tit. No one ever called me pretty, but if that bitch wasn’t XY, she was a freak. She was too thick and too hard, and to make weight she must have flushed out both ends for a week, because no way was she in my class. She was slow, though, and leaned too much on her size. I was seeing black, and all I knew was when I got loose, her size wouldn’t save her.
I couldn’t see her, but my palm was in her chin and I pushed until she had to move. When she went back and turned, I jammed my thumb deep under her jawbone so she couldn’t back come down and pin me like she wanted. I grabbed her jaw and twisted, and she had to get off and deal with me or I’d break it. When she did, I let go and kicked back, but I cracked into the chain-link pole at the edge of the ring. She came right back, but I got a foot in before she bashed me in the face with her big man hand, pushing me into the chain so hard I felt the skin split above my eye and blood run down my face.
She leaned down on my foot, mouth hanging open and face red, as she tried to crush me. Sweat stung the corner of my eye as a string of spit blew around on the end of her fat bottom lip. Even with my leg there it was hard to keep her back, so when she went to change position, I locked my legs around her waist and tucked her in close. She saw where she was going but was too late to stop it, and I didn’t give her a chance to tense up. I put the vise to her ribs full force and she screamed, face red and veins popping. For one split second, her brain was stuck on that and just that. I could see it.
A nose breaks easily, and hers broke flat when I fired my palm down on the bridge. Blood sprayed down her chin, and a lot of strength went out of her all at once. I let go of the scissor lock and brought one leg up on the back of her neck and locked that ankle under the opposite knee while I clamped down on her head and left arm.
By the time she saw what was up, it was too late and she knew it. That lock was death, and as I closed the triangle, cutting off her air, she knew it was done, but she kept at it. Even when I squeezed blood out of her nose and her face went dark, she tried to get up.
Tap, you bitch….
The crowd went ape shit with cheers, boos, and feet stomping on the stands. A hand reached through the cage and grabbed my wrist. Where the hell was security? She bucked like a pig between my legs, and the hand that came through the cage didn’t want to let go, so I twisted it around. The middle finger snapped as I wrenched it back, and someone screamed, then jerked it away.
As she pushed me back down to the canvas like a blind bull, I saw blood was running thick, some from my head and some from her nose, and there was a ton of it. The bitch should have just tapped; they’d have called it anyway. They should have called it.
She pushed, and her free hand grabbed a fistful of skin on my bare thigh. She twisted it and dug her thumb into my crotch.
I don’t think she meant to. Later I thought that, at least. I didn’t mean to do what I did either, but that’s how it went down. The slow grind I had on the leg lock turned mean, and I pumped it closed all at once, just for a second, but that’s all it took. Her whole body jerked, and the hand that had me let go.
“Match!” a judge screamed. I kicked her off of me and rolled away, the sight in my right eye going red as blood ran in it. From both sides I could hear feet pound the canvas as the refs charged out.
“Match!” someone in the ring yelled. The crowd sounded as if they would rip the place apart, cheering and cursing and shaking the chain link as though they were trying to tear it down. When I tried to get up, a heavy hand came down on my shoulder and pushed me back so I was kneeling.
“Wait,” Eddie growled in my ear. I put my hands on my knees and tried to see as he pushed the blood clotter into the cut over my eye. Two guys from the other corner were with the man-girl as she wobbled on her hands and knees. She groped with one red hand as blood ran down her chin, trying to push at the guy who pinched her nose shut. Her eyes swam, and I thought maybe I broke her.
Refs and guys from both sides pointed and yelled at each other, trying to be heard over the crowd as the docs looked at her neck and talked in her ear. After almost a minute, she made a face, but she pushed them away. She needed a hand and she stood crooked, but she got up. Eddie clapped my shoulder.
“Up!”
“Winner!” the judge wailed on the amp. “Winner by submission: Calliope Flax!”
My face came up on the big board, and I saw that the whole right side was covered in blood with a big, open cut on a fat black-and-blue bulge over my eye.
My name is Cal, asshole….
I hated my name. If I ever got out of third tier, I swore the first thing I’d do would be to change it. They made me put my full name, and Eddie said he liked it because of some sales shit. Ironic, he said. Asshole.
I faced the crowd and watched them freak, half of them wanting to shake my hand and the rest wanting to kill me. Some guy up front was going nuts, screaming something. He whipped a brown bottle at me and it smashed on the fence, spraying glass.
“Fuck you!” I screamed, sticking out my finger at him.
“Flax, you bitch!” he yelled, grabbing the fence and pulling on it. I kicked it, and he got his fingers out just in time.
One of the refs helped the girl limp to the center of the ring with me. She was hurting, and I could tell her neck was jacked up. She glared at me over the bridge of her broken nose and there were tears in her eyes.
“Shake hands,” the ref said.
I held out my hand, and she took it, but her eyes showed how much she hated me. I pumped her hand twice, then looked at the crowd so I didn’t have to look at her. All through the stands they were going nuts. The guy who threw the bottle now threw a folded chair at the fence, his face red. Another bottle hit the chain link and sprayed onto the ring.
“Come on!” Eddie shouted, calling me over to the corner where the exit was. A bunch of big dudes were pushing back the crowd on both sides as some of them tried to get to the spot I’d come out of, while other guys went after them from the stands. Eddie opened the door in the fence.
“Straight back to the lockers and don’t stop!” he said as I went by.
I gave him the finger and hopped down in between the security guys, then stuck both fingers straight up in the air as I walked the line back to the lockers. Marko was up next and Jefe after him, so they were hanging near the door.
“You messed that bitch up,” Marko said.
“Good.”
I said it, but it still didn’t sit right, the way she popped and went limp like that. The way she stared me down afterward wasn’t like usual, and the look in her eyes was still on my mind.
“We’re hitting the Bucket after the fights,” Jefe said. “You in?”
“Yeah, I’m in.”
So that was that. When the whole thing got going, that’s where I was. Third tier, dirt-poor, beat to hell, and ready to drink. I didn’t know shit about any of it or that half of it could even happen in this life, but that’s that.
I guess you never know.
“Zoe?” a woman was asking. Through a window I could see the city was burning, the neon lights were dark, and cherry red cinders swirled in the cold night air.
“Yes?”
“Follow me.”
“Why?”
“Because you are the last piece of the puzzle,” she said, and she took my hand with her cold, dead one.
All I wanted, the only thing I wanted in the whole stupid world, was some peace. I would have been happy with a day, or even just one minute where someone or something wasn’t in my face or buzzing in my head, but it was never going to happen, because even when I shut myself inside for days, they still managed to find me. They hounded me until I slept, and then they followed me into my dreams.
This time it was the dead woman with the short dirty blond hair. I wasn’t sure who she was, but she had a look that made me think she’d been a professional of some kind. She wore a woman’s suit, but it wasn’t just that; it was her face, her hair, and the way she held herself. In the middle of her forehead, about the size of a quarter, the number 3 had been pressed into the skin with black ink.
She had been killed recently and looked a little disheveled, but even so, she managed to seem authoritative and sure. She had nice cheekbones, gorgeous eyes, and a strong jaw. She was a couple inches taller than me, with long legs and a good body. I hated her. I hated her for her looks, the way she dragged me around, and because she never left me alone.
“Why is the city burning?” I asked her, but she didn’t answer me. Her hand was cold on my wrist as she pulled me along after her, away from the window and down a dark hallway.
“Where are we going?” I asked. She looked over her shoulder and caught me staring at her free hand, which was covered in blood. It was clutched around what looked like a human heart, a big gash cut into the middle of it.
“It got split,” she said, like that explained it.
“This is a dream,” I told her.
She didn’t respond to that. She dragged me after her and pushed open a door that led into a green concrete room.
“Not this again,” I said. The room was rectangular, about eight feet side to side, twelve feet front to back, and eight feet again to the ceiling. The walls and floors were smooth concrete painted dark green, and whatever the place was for, it must have had some significance, because it wasn’t the first time I ended up there.
She let go of my wrist and grabbed the power switch mounted on the wall, slamming it into the up position and causing the overhead lights to flicker on with an angry electric buzzing noise. There were two people standing at the far end of the room, staring forward. One was a man; the other I thought was a man at first, but it was a very butch woman. There was a space between them for a third person.
“Who are they?” I asked. A light came on over the man, illuminating him, so I could see him clearly. I recognized him; I’d seen him on TV a couple times, on the news.
“This one will need your help,” she said, pointing. “When he calls, go to him.”
He was a tall, handsome man with very blue eyes and short black hair. When I saw him on the news, I remembered he was wearing a suit. He carried a badge, the kind you kept in a leather wallet. He was somebody important, some kind of investigator or something. He wasn’t wearing his suit now, though; he was wearing a white sleeveless undershirt. In the middle of his forehead, pressed in black ink, was the number 4.
“Where did the scar come from?” I asked. There was a big white scar that started up beneath his jawline and got thicker as it moved down his neck, then behind the undershirt. There was more scar tissue across his right shoulder. The woman didn’t answer.
“Your chance of successfully navigating this relationship is fifty percent,” she said instead.
“What relationship?” I asked, but she was on to the next one. The light came on over the woman, letting me see her clearly.
“This one will help you,” she said, pointing. “When you call, she will go to you.”
She was about six inches shorter than the man, and thinner, but even more muscular. She looked like she was all muscle and bone, with broad shoulders, narrow hips, and a mean face. Her lips were painted black and peeled back in a wide frown, and her nose had been broken at some point. Her hair was cropped almost to stubble, and her prominent chin jutted forward. I had never seen her before in my life.
Her left hand was a pale gray that went up to the middle of her forearm, and black veins stood out under the skin. The number 2 was stamped on her forehead.
“Your chance of successfully navigating this relationship is ninety percent.”
“What about the middle spot?” I asked.
“That is where I stand,” she said.
“So we’re going to meet?”
“We will meet three times before this is all over.”
“And what are my chances of success with you?”
“Respectively, in percentages,” she said, “thirty, one hundred, and zero.”
“Those aren’t good odds.”
“Only the first one will occur at this time.”
She reached over and snapped the switch back down, cutting the lights. She looked down at her hand, still holding the wounded heart, and looked a little sad.
“Is it yours?” I asked. She ignored me.
The woman stepped back away from me, disappearing into the shadows, and then everything faded away. The green room dissolved around me, leaving nothing but blackness.
I opened my eyes. I was awake, or at least I thought I was. It seemed like I spent a lot of time wondering whether I was dreaming or not. I picked my head up off the couch and blinked until things stopped spinning, and strained to see out the window. It was still dark outside.
I felt a tickle on my neck and brushed at it. Something brown with feelers flicked onto the floor and scurried off. I turned my head and looked at the coffee table; the remote controls were spread out all over the place, along with some pens, a spiral notebook, an oil-stained paper plate, and a shot glass that was full to the brim. I sat up and looked at the TV, which was showing some cartoon with the sound down. I drank the shot, then grabbed the bottle of ouzo from the floor and refilled the glass as I burped up a pocket of air that tasted like cabbage, licorice, and soy sauce.
I poured more of the ouzo into the shot glass, which had kind of become a moving target, and spilled a little onto the floor. I wiped it up with the toe of my sock. I drank the shot and stared at the TV.
A green icon danced in the upper right-hand corner of the screen; the data miner was bouncing around, letting me know it had finished gathering information. I couldn’t remember what I had been looking for.
Fumbling for the remote, I turned the sound back on and brought up the data miner. All the categories had hits. The timer showed the miner had been collecting information for almost two hours…. I must have dozed off for a while there. There were multiple hits on a bunch of topics: movie stars, TV stars, musicians…. One jumped out at me.
WACHALOWSKI.
The dancing icon bounced next to the name. It had eleven hits.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked.
I brought up his listings and had a look; they were all news channels, all short segments. I cycled through the stills. Three of them were the same shot of him standing in what looked like a dark building lobby, facing the person taking the footage.
It was the man from the green room, the one with the scar. He was with the FBI, it looked like. The scar I’d seen in my dream was there, going from beneath his jaw to down under his shirt collar.
I clicked the remote to play the first segment. Agent Wachalowski took out his badge and showed it to the person filming.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Colin Patrick,” a young man’s voice, maybe dubbed in, said from offscreen, “freelance news. I received a tip that you uncovered a human-trafficking ring, right here in this office building. Can you tell me anything about what you found?”
“Sorry, I can’t,” Wachalowski said. The camera cut away to show the elevator door, where the numbers on the display indicated a car descending.
“I hear you’ve got some revivors upstairs,” Colin said.
“Be careful,” Wachalowski said, and the camera cut quickly a couple times as he pushed by, “the SWAT guys are on their way down.”
The camera cut back to the newsroom, where two anchors were sitting.
“While there were no witnesses to the actual removal of the revivors,” the woman anchor said, “a source at the FBI confirmed that a total of twenty-one revivors were recovered at the Goicoechea Building, which was, to all appearances, a hub for trafficking in bodies from outside the country, for distribution to the underground labor and sex trades.”
I shuddered.
“Sources also report that at least one of the smuggler’s clients was not apprehended,” the male anchor said, “and that, based on the records recovered, there may be twenty or more revivors still unaccounted for inside the city.”
The rest of the clip looked like the anchors going back and forth, so I flipped to the next one. Someone had managed to get some footage as the FBI came out of the building. One of them held a woman’s arm as she walked, naked except for a blanket, through the snow. Her skin was grayish, and her white eyes looked like they were staring right at the camera. It was a revivor.
Weird. I took another shot, looking into those freaky eyes over the rim of the glass. You almost never saw video of them. It sent a shiver down my spine.
“This is just one more example of the sick, twisted, and ultimately debasing effect this whole endeavor is having on our people, our country, and our world,” a man was saying. “Offering second- tier citizenship benefits to anyone volunteering for Posthumous Service is this administration’s most appalling—”
“So serve,” the woman countered. “Serve your country, is that so much to ask? Serve the obligatory two years and get first-tier benefits. Is that such a crime? Serve your country, and it will serve you.”
“They don’t even want that. They’d rather have a never-ending stream of cannon fodder they can buy on the cheap for second-tier benefits. The whole thing is—”
“Then don’t serve,” the woman snapped. “If you can’t handle either form of service, then don’t serve. No one is forced into it.”
“No, they can settle for life below the poverty line. Less than one percent of third tiers ever make it to even lower-middle class. That’s the life you can expect for—”
I flipped through the rest of the clips and found they were all just variations on the first footage I saw. There weren’t any other revivor pictures, and there weren’t any good pictures of Wachalowski.
I did a freeze-frame on the shot of him from the hotel lobby, and zoomed in on his face. He looked kind of mad, but maybe something else too. I couldn’t read the expression in his eyes, but there was something about the set of them that seemed …distressed? Disturbed? They almost looked a little sad. He had really blue eyes. Light blue. I wondered where the scar came from.
What did you see in there? What did you see that made you look that way?
It didn’t sound as though they were going to offer any more information. I took another drink and yawned, when I heard a medium-loud thump from the apartment below me. Just like clockwork.
The ticker under Wachalowski’s picture said the office where the incident took place was right here in the city. He worked out of the local office. He was somewhere right in the city. Whatever was going on, it was happening out there, right now.
There was a loud crash from below. I heard glass break, and a man’s angry voice. Couldn’t they give it a rest for one night?
I stood up too quickly and stumbled into the couch a little before making my way to the front door. I shoved it open and knocked an old pizza box across the floor, then hurried down the hall, past the peeling wallpaper and the hole in the drywall to the stairwell. I pushed the heavy door open, then started down the stairs, holding on to the metal railing for support. The walls were covered in graffiti, and at the next landing something brown stained the grout between the grimy tiles. I pushed open the door and staggered out into the hallway.
The shouting was coming from down there, and I did a fast walk down that familiar path. I stopped at the door marked 613 and started knocking on it. I was still knocking on it when it opened suddenly.
My fist pounded the air and I stumbled forward before catching myself. He was standing there, holding it open, looking like he had opened the door and found dog crap. He was wearing a tank top and jeans, as usual. His hair was greasy, and he always looked kind of sweaty.
“What the hell do you want?”
I focused, staring at him until the room seemed to get brighter and the color kind of washed out of everything except the light that came into focus around his head. It glowed, like soft electric light …red, kind of like fire, and flaring up in little points and spikes. He was angry, as usual.
“What the fu—” he said, then fizzled in midsentence as I focused on that light.
“Calm down,” I said, and the spikes began to settle. The red shifted to violet, then blue. His stupid eyes changed, some of the meanness going out of them. He stood there like an ape until the light settled into a cool blue, like the sky on a sunny day.
His girlfriend or whoever she was peeked out from behind him, watching me from a few feet inside. She’d been crying, her shirt torn and her hair messed up.
“You should get some sleep,” I told him.
He nodded, his eyes dull. I pulled my attention away from him. The light shifted back to normal, and the sharpness surged back into my surroundings. He rubbed at his face, then turned and waddled back inside. The woman met my eye for a second and gave me that look she sometimes did. That relieved, embarrassed, guilty look that was the closest she ever came to thanking me.
A chill ran up my legs and I realized for the first time that I was standing there in nothing but a nightshirt and underpants. I turned without saying anything, and went back upstairs.
When I got back inside, I closed the door behind me and locked it. I stood there for a second, leaning my back against it, and hoped she wouldn’t follow me. She wouldn’t, though; she never did. I hated going down there. Why did she stay with him?
The image of the FBI agent Wachalowski was still on the TV screen, like he was staring me down from across the room. There was something about his eyes, like he could see right through the screen and into my apartment and was wondering what he had just watched.
He wouldn’t believe it if he knew. The woman downstairs had watched it enough times with her own two eyes and she didn’t even believe it.
Sitting back down with the bottle, I tried to push the whole thing out of my head. I switched the channel before I had my next drink, because I didn’t want him to watch me do it. Later, when I got closer to the bottom, I wouldn’t care, but right then I didn’t want anyone to see. Tomorrow I’d stay sober. Maybe I’d take it easy for a few nights, to detox myself and kind of clear my head.
I was too far gone tonight, but tomorrow definitely.
Using the tuner, I strayed out of the news bands and into the movie area, where the search ’bot scanned hundreds of channels for things that interested me. It stayed quiet downstairs for a while; then they had sex for a few minutes; then it got quiet again. I wondered why the FBI agent Wachalowski ended up in the green room, but not for long before the booze started doing its job.
All I wanted was to be numb when the needle-head finally did show up again. The rest would work itself out.
As I cruised down the interstate, I could still feel the blood pulsing in my neck. Before I left, I’d signed out a weapon. Having a gun strapped next to my ribs made me breathe a little easier, but I could still feel the cold meat of that dead arm around my neck.
Where had someone like Tai gotten a piece of meat like that? Revivors like the females he kept were the only kind most people outside of the military wanted to deal in. They were weak and docile. They were predictable. The one that attacked me in the hallway was old-school, third-world military. I didn’t think anyone made them like that anymore. It drooled, so it was hungry. Revivors couldn’t process food; the newer ones had a shunt in the brain that told them they were full. The old ones were always hungry, with no way to make it stop. Back in the grinder, sometimes they wired their jaws shut. Sometimes they just let them eat. No one stateside wanted units like that.
The kinds of people who might be interested in a revivor like that would also be interested in Tai’s little arsenal. Someone on this side of the border wanted both those things and was willing to pay for them. Tai had at least one customer I hadn’t known anything about. Whoever that was, he was into something worse than body-bag sex and slavery.
A horn blared, snapping my attention back to the road. A semi with a freezer car sporting a biohazard warning, probably filled with bodies and headed for the Heinlein labs, drifted into my lane.
A message came in from the Federal Building. I picked up.
Go ahead, Sean.
That kid from the lobby already has bites airing.
Great. How’d he edit?
Well. You two look like best friends. They want a statement tomorrow to defuse this.
I’ll try to find something newsworthy.
Streetlights streaked by as I veered off the express lane and down toward the shipyard. A tight loop took me under a rusted bridge that was covered in graffiti and sent me toward a series of shadowed behemoths moored along the docks.
As I got closer, my long- range scanner picked up a revivor heart signature, although it was too far away to read. I brought up a map of the dock and laid the location of the signature over it, a soft orange flickering behind my eyes in the rearview mirror.
It’s a revivor—I’ve got a signature. Where’s the backup team?
On their way.
I homed in on the dock where the signature was emanating from and pulled over, stepping out of the car. It was windy, and the cold, damp breeze coming in off the water smelled like ocean and garbage. The dock planks and chain posts were covered in a thick layer of frost, jagged little icicles leaning into the wind. Beyond that, through fog and snow, the skyline rose up in a sea of neon and electric light.
I switched off the GPS and focused on the signal. It was coming from a stack of huge metal shipping containers that had been offloaded and were sitting in the fog. Were we going to get that lucky?
It looks like it’s still with the offloaded cargo. I’m going to check it out.
The containers were stacked two stories high; mass vehicle transports, each capable of holding maybe twenty-four cars. I moved into the shadows between two rows of them, toward the signal.
How many?
Just one.
I found the container the signature was coming from and approached it. The front end of it had a huge set of doors to allow vehicles in and out, and it was barred and locked. To the side of the large doors was a small one to allow inspectors in and out. I scanned the scene and packaged the footage along with the rest of the case information, then sent out a warrant request.
Granted.
I approached the small door and put my thumb to the lock, issuing an override code. A few seconds later, the bolt opened with a loud snap. I pushed it open with a crunch that brought flakes of ice down over my head, and went inside.
Adjusting the night vision filter, I looked around. The crate was filled with tightly packed rows of electric cars sitting on metal skids, parked bumper to bumper and three rows high.
I scanned the inside of the container; the signal was coming from above me. After climbing up the scaffolding, I managed to follow it to a single car in the middle row. I peered in through the side window, trying not to fog it up.
There was a female revivor inside, lying on the backseat and wrapped in plastic. I opened the back door and leaned in for a closer look. The wrap was sealed, and the body wasn’t moving.
Using my field knife, I slit the plastic down the middle and pulled it apart. I could tell right away it was a combat model; plain-looking with short hair, a scar on the forehead, and little in the way of curves. No fancy skin work or cosmetic augmentation had been done.
Leaning in close, I used the backscatter to get a look under the skin and saw some muscle work and joint augmentation. Resting in a chamber between the bones of the right forearm was what they called a revivor bayonet. For sure, it was a combat model, and not a hack job either. This one had rolled off some country’s assembly line.
There was a low creak from below me as the door to the crate opened partway, and I froze. I backed slowly out of the car and drew my gun, peeking through the metal lattice where I saw a figure down below, moving through the doorway. I zoomed in on it.
“What are you doing here, kid?” I said, just loud enough to be heard. At the sound, he jumped. It was the same one from the lobby; he must have tailed me.
“Following the story.”
“You pieced that footage together pretty quick,” I said.
He shrugged. “Gotta move fast in this business,” he said. “Did you find it?”
“Find what?”
“Oh, come on,” he whispered. “What do you think? The reviv—”
A shot rang out before I could answer him, and the kid’s head pitched to one side. His body bounced off the door and spilled out onto the dock.
I stayed crouched as the container door slowly ground to a stop with a metallic groan. I zoomed in on the kid; most of what had been inside his head was scattered over the planks, steam rising off it. Footsteps were approaching; someone heavy was running very fast across the dock toward the container. Given the weight and speed of the footfalls, whoever it was had to be augmented. I aimed toward the doorway as the footsteps thumped to an abrupt stop just outside.
I’ve got gunfire down here and one civilian dead. Where’s backup?
A weapon was thrust through the doorway, and immediately automatic gunfire pounded through the inside of the container, sending sparks flying off the car I was crouched behind. One of the tires blew out and I was sprayed with bits of safety glass as bullets punched through the car. I fell back, slipped, and tumbled off the scaffolding down onto the floor. I pushed myself behind another car as the racket continued. A second later, the heart signature I was monitoring flatlined.
Damn it.
The backup team just entered the shipyard. Hang on.
Another burst of gunfire sounded, and as I moved along the bottom row of cars, I caught sight of the shooter in the doorway. I fired at him three times, hitting him at least once before another volley ripped into the car in front of me.
He ducked back out and it got quiet. He wasn’t visible through the exit where the kid’s body was now holding the door open, so I listened for him, but my ears were ringing and I couldn’t make anything out. He wasn’t showing up on the thermal filter, but the door or the walls of the container might have been shielding him.
I moved to the far end of the container and followed the wall to the door. I still didn’t see him, so I moved to the doorway and crouched down near the body. No one was on the left side of the exit, but the door was still hanging open to the right. I moved outside and spun around the door, but before I could bring my gun around, he grabbed my wrist and held it like a vise.
He was definitely augmented; he moved me easily, pulling me off balance and smashing my hand into the metal wall. My grip loosened, and he delivered a hard punch to my gut. The strength went out of my legs, and I felt the gun fall from my fingers.
He let go of me and I slipped on a patch of ice, coming down on my knees onto the dock. It hurt when I forced in a breath, and spots were swimming in front of my eyes. I felt like I’d just been hit by a train.
The guy was wearing a navy jumpsuit like one of the dockworkers might wear over a thermal body glove. He had dark skin and wavy black hair that stuck out from under a gray wool cap. He put the automatic weapon he’d been carrying down on the ground, the clip expended. He didn’t bother to go for my gun, so he knew the grip was keyed to me.
“I’m a federal agent,” I said, but he didn’t show any sign that he cared or that he even understood me. I went for my gun and he threw a kick, catching me in the chest and knocking me back.
I was lifted up by the lapels and felt my heels brush the ground for a moment before the back of my head crashed into the metal wall. Everything went white for a second, and his hand began to squeeze around my neck, crushing it.
I was going to black out. Warning lights were flashing red across my field of vision. I caught a brief glimpse of an override code flickering by as the world spun around me, and one of the internal stims popped and released into my bloodstream.
My adrenaline shot through the roof. About half the warning indicators blinked out and half stayed on as my EKG spiked and every muscle in my body jumped like I’d grabbed a live wire. I shot out my palm and his nose crunched underneath it, spattering us both with blood. I grabbed his head and jabbed my knee up into his jaw. The grip on my neck released.
I fell to the ground and tackled him, knocking us both onto the dock with me on top of him. I started hammering him in the face and neck with my fists, splitting his cheek open and shearing away his two front teeth before he could get his arms up between us.
The stim wasn’t going to last forever; I put three right hooks into his ear as he got a hand on my chest and shoved me back. My last punch hit air as I floundered, and he kicked me square in the chest. I fell on my back and saw him getting up.
Blood was running out of his nose, dripping off his chin. His lips were red and his right earlobe was smashed. He grimaced, flicking a tooth out onto the ground with his tongue. A crimson strand of saliva from his busted lower lip waved in the cold wind as his breath plumed out of his mouth.
I tried to kick away and he grabbed me, pulling me up by my collar.
We’ve got him.
It took me a second to realize what the message meant; my backup was there, targeting him from somewhere nearby. The stim was wearing off, and I could feel the strength draining out of me.
Don’t kill him.
Roger that.
He pitched back and dropped me just as I heard the shot ring out. I saw his leg collapse into a Z shape between the right knee and ankle as the flesh and bone were torn away and he fell to the ground. He rolled over on his side, staring bug-eyed at his leg.
Do I need to hit him again?
No.
I found my weapon and limped over to it. I knelt down and picked it up, then vomited.
You okay?
I watched the steam rising off it, waiting to see if there was any more coming.
Wachalowski, you okay?
I’m fine. Get a coroner down here.
After they were done scraping the kid off the dock, maybe we could pull something off him. The department would never foot the bill to buy up exclusive rights in order to sit on the footage. If it was bad enough, they could file an injunction and put a freeze on it, but not before it aired.
Two men were cuffing the shooter, while a third tended to his leg. Another man was approaching the body of the kid, not looking optimistic.
“You’re a dead man,” the shooter growled through his wrecked mouth, glaring up at me.
“I know.”
“He knows who you are,” he said. I was about to ask him what he meant by that when one of the men jammed a tranquilizer into his neck and he went limp.
“Have the medics pin his leg back together and make sure he doesn’t bleed to death,” I said. “Then I want him back at HQ and three keycards deep before anyone else sees him or talks to him.”
“Got it.”
I started making my way back to my car before the aftershock of the stims kicked in and knocked my body chemistry far enough out of whack that the ignition’s safety catch would refuse to let it start. By the time I fell into the driver’s seat, my stomach felt like a pound of ice was sitting in it and I was sweating despite the freezing cold. When I pressed my thumb to the ignition, the light flashed yellow, but it started.
Leaning back, I routed around my emergency systems and manually popped the last stim. A few seconds later, the aftershock backed off, but it threatened to come back, the worse for waiting.
Ice and grit crunched under the tires as I pulled out and aimed for the home office, which was the next best thing to home.